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Protecting women and girls around the world from gender based violence.

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The project

The Challenge

According to the UN, violence against women (VAW) includes “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private.” The UN estimates that 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence, and about 120 million girls have been forced into sexual acts at some point in their lives. Furthermore, recent research finds that 76% of women under 30 have reported abuse or harassment online.

This widespread violation of human rights means that women and girls can be afraid to participate fully in their communities, which has significant human and economic costs for society. In the UK for instance the cost of gender violence against women reaches almost 28.5 billion euros (US $ 31.8 billion).

The Approach

The Womanity Award for the Prevention of Violence Against Women was developed in 2013, on the basis of a study and program designed for the Foundation, by Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP). The Award was first presented to winners in 2014. The international award supports collaboration between individuals or groups seeking to combat gender-based violence, and aims to break down barriers that such organizations face. This enables ground-breaking projects that are successful in one location, to be expanded, and reproduced elsewhere, to reach and help many more women.

Given every two years, the Womanity Award is presented to two recipients who work in partnership, with the Foundation’s financial and technical support. The Foundation fosters connections to professional services, supports learning visits and in depth work around monitoring and evaluation, and provides any relevant expertise and resources necessary for the replication and scaling up of the innovation.

The Award helps an Innovation Partner that has developed an already successful approach to the problem of VAW to increase their reach; whilst their designated Scale-Up Partner will receive support to adapt and deliver that project in their own location. The partnership lasts for three years.

The project aims to demonstrate the success of a new philanthropic model that builds upon scattered capacities and combines them to achieve lasting, large-scale change.

The first recipients of the first Womanity Award were Promundo (based in Brazil and the US) and Abaad (based in Lebanon) in 2014.

Promundo, the Womanity Award Innovation Partner, has pioneered Program H, aiming to address the roots of violence by positively transforming gender norms. Men’s involvement as gender-equitable caregivers is promoted, and harmful gender stereotypes in schools and workplaces are deconstructed.

Positive outcomes of Program H include improved sexual and reproductive health, a reduction in sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, as well as a reduction in gender-based violence. Young people have become engaged as agents of change.

Abaad, the Womanity Award Scale-Up Partner, is dedicated to the advancement, participation and empowerment of women in Lebanon and in the Middle East and North Africa, and through this aim to increase social and economic development. The award supports Promundo and Abaad to adapt Program H for delivery in this region.

The campaign has been endorsed by the Lebanese President and stimulated national debates on the subject of gender-based violence in Lebanon, encouraging women and men to refer cases to Abaad.

APC, the Womanity Award Innovation Partner, has set up the Take Back the Tech! campaign, in Mexico, with a view to counter and build awareness of the problem of online and other tech-related violence against women.

Since its inception in 2006, APC has supported local Take Back the Tech! campaigns in over 35 countries.

La Sandía Digital/Luchadoras, the Womanity Award Scale-Up Partners, are two multidisciplinary feminist collectives of women media producers based in Mexico City, dedicated to the promotion of women’s rights and social justice: Luchadoras via its online show and La Sandía Digital through participatory video documentaries.

Luchadoras has produced 160 shows with more than 250 women from Mexico, Colombia, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Nicaragua and Palestine. The weekly show now boasts over 500,000 viewers per month.

Since may 2016, Luchadoras, the scale up partner has now successfully formed “Siemprevivas”, a collective of 6 activist organizations that will roll out the campaign in Mexico.

The collective is getting from strength to strength as they are bridging off line and online activities.

The collective have been equipped with theory of change methodology,

They have designed their M&E framework,

Kick-started media producing and digital self-defense activities in various places in Mexico.

Other activities include physical self-defense, mapping of online violence, assistance to online violence survivors have taken place.

They have now set up a feminist server, enabling them to communicate safely online, in a protected private space, where they can also make collective decisions and work on their joint campaign.

On policy and global campaigning level, they have taken part in AWID, but also the Internet Governance Forum, the Internet Freedom Festival, and RightsCon, adding the Mexican voice to the debate.

Deconstructing Masculinities

2014 Awardees

The inaugural Womanity Award in 2014 went to the US-Brazilian organization Promundo and their Lebanese partners Abaad, to replicate Promundo’s work engaging men and boys in the achievement of women and girls’ rights (called Program H). Program H has had considerable success in Brazil and dozens of countries around the world. Abaad is implementing the approach for the first time in the Middle East with the help of Promundo and the support of the Womanity Foundation.

About Promundo

Promundo is a global leader in promoting gender justice and preventing violence by engaging men and boys in partnership with women and girls.

“Program H” (“H” for homens, or men, in Portuguese, and hombres in Spanish) is a methodology developed by Promundo and partners to start conversations with young men and their communities about norms related to manhood.

The “Program H” manual includes approximately 200 activities to carry out group work with young men (ages 15 to 24) on gender, sexuality, reproductive health, fatherhood and care giving, violence prevention, emotional health, drug use, and preventing and living with HIV and AIDS.

Through the Program H toolkit, Promundo has reduced intimate-partner violence among more than 250,000 young men and women across 40 countries, by combining group education with youth-led activism to achieve equality and reduce violence. Public school systems in Brazil, India, Croatia, Chile, Nicaragua, and elsewhere have officially adopted the approach as a part of their school curriculum.

This replication work is a first of its kind in the MENA region.

About Abaad

Abaad is a Lebanese based NGO promoting sustainable social and economic development in the MENA region through equality, protection and empowerment of marginalized groups, especially women.

Abaad leads various projects simultaneously, related to women and girls’ empowerment and the transformation of masculinities (some of which, outside Program H, are also developed in partnership with Promundo).

“Undergoing this work at a point in these young men’s lives where they are still formulating their identities and understanding how to interact with others – specifically members of the opposite sex – will prevent countless cases of gender-based violence in Lebanon,” says Anthony Keedi, Program Manager of ABAAD’s Masculinities Program.

Replication Process

Abaad and Promundo undertook a foundation learning visit to Serbia in October 2014, where they benefited from the expertise of past successful replications by the Young Men Initiative in the Balkans as well as Youth Action Northern Ireland.

Inspired by their learning meeting in the Balkans, Abaad proceeded with a first translation of the Program H manual and a thorough expert review to validate the cultural adaptation.

The “Program H” curriculum for Lebanon has now been translated in Arabic. Promundo has reviewed the manual following Abaad’s robust process of verification and cultural adaptation with experts in the sector, to ensure the changes are still in line with the original ethos of the manual.

Validation sessions have taken place in the first semester of 2016 with future trainers as well as young people in order to gather as much feedback as possible by representative stakeholders.

Participants are sourced from the Men Engage network in Lebanon.

In February 2016, a second learning visit took place with Promundo and Abaad in Rio, Brazil, where Program H originally started. Abaad are learning a lot from this cross-fertilization of projects, and are therefore able to maximize their resources. Promundo proved to be a strong mentor for the Lebanese organization. However Promundo also shares they are growing their understanding of the challenges around masculinities in the MENA region.

The launch of Program H Lebanon, took place on July 14th 2016 in Beirut. The Arabic version of the curriculum is called Programme RA (for “Rajol”, “man” in arabic).

Both organizations are now focusing on the implementation of a robust monitoring and evaluation process to measure changes experienced by stakeholders.

An internet free of violence against women

2016 Awardees

The second Womanity Award was announced in Paris at the OuiShare Fest, in May 2016. The Award went to the Take Back the Tech! (TBTT!) campaign, led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) (South Africa) and Luchadoras/La Sandía Digital (Mexico). The collaborative campaign, which addresses the wide-spread problem of online violence against women, enables women to proactively respond to online abuse, claim virtual space and creatively influence policies and practices. The ultimate goal is to build an Internet free of violence.

TTBT! works to get more women online and trained in new technologies so they can have a louder voice. It also seeks recognition for women’s achievements in ICT and in all areas of life, and for these achievements to be fairly documented on sites like Wikipedia, for example.

The winning partner organizations will collaborate for three years to extend and replicate the TBTT! in Mexico. This Award will enable the Partners to produce internet TV programs to increase awareness of the campaignamong young women, use online and traditional media to communicate tools and strategies for dealing with tech-related VAW, and build a network of young feminist activists and media producers.

“Violence against women and girls online is increasing,” says Lulú V. Barrera, founder of Luchadoras. “We want to break down stereotypes of women as submissive, with secondary roles in society around marriage and motherhood. We want to empower women through technology.”

About APC

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), headquartered in South Africa, created the Take Back the Tech global campaign in 2006, with the view to reclaim online space for women and making that space safer and more representative, as well as a place for women to thrive and challenge norms that perpetuate discrimination and violence. The campaign is now present in 35 countries.

About La Sandía Digital

La Sandía Digital works with women in Latin America and helps them produce their own films documenting experiences around sexism. Such films include Living in Darkness, which highlights the case of a woman who tried desperately to divorce her husband but was criminalised for not fulfilling traditional gender roles around motherhood. La Sandía Digital has also created a very popular weekly feminist internet TV programme called Luchadoras, a subsidiary that will become fully independent at completion of the Womanity Award program..

About Luchadoras

Luchadoras, based in Mexico City, is dedicated to the promotion of women’s rights and social justice via an online feminist TV show broadcast weakly trough RompevientoTV. To replicate Take Back the Tech!, the collective will build a strong strategic network, equip women for digital self-defense, and train them to create content to respond to abuse and violence online.

Luchadoras is recognized by women’s rights movement as an important ally in amplifying their demands given limited mainstream media attention to social activism. In March 2016, the Mexico City Human Rights Commission awarded Luchadoras’ founder Lulú Barrera an honorable mention in the Hermila Galindo Prize for “innovative use of ICT to promote gender equality”.

Replication Process

In order to adapt Take Back The Tech! to the Mexican setting, with younger women’s collectives, the Partners will aim to:

Challenge the norms

Build awareness

Amplify collective power

Strengthen response

ICT for Womanity

ICT for Womanity Network

The Award winning program will also connect with other initiatives using ICT to prevent violence against women, creating a global network of activists and practitioners and fostering peer to peer opportunities. This network aims to:

Increase the two Award winners’ learning opportunities;

Provide a safe space to exchange information and knowledge on how ICTs can prevent violence against women;

Collect and analyze data to assess the effectiveness of ICTs improving women’s safety;

Increase awareness in the mainstream media of how ICT is proven to prevent violence against women

For more information on registration, articles and achievements to date, visit the ICTforWomanity page